Tuesday, June 07, 2005

The U.S. has a vast and very expensive Homeland Security bureaucracy with nothing to do. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in America since 2001. As very few, if any, real terrorists have turned up, the FBI has resorted to creating terrorists by soliciting Muslim-Americans and appealing to them with schemes to aid 'jihadists.'

Recently, two American citizens were caught in a FBI sting. One, an Ivy League-educated physician, is charged with agreeing to provide medical care to wounded holy warriors in Saudi Arabia. The other, a famous jazz musician, is charged with agreeing to train jihadists in martial arts.

It took two years of work and cajoling to manufacture the case against these two Americans.

What the FBI has done to Dr. R.A. Sabir and Tarik Shah was once known as entrapment. Note that the two could not have offered their services to jihadists, because no jihadists were present. Note also that Sabir and Tarik are not accused of actually performing an act of service. Sabir and Tarik had no contact with real jihadists, and they committed no act of service to jihadists. Yet both face $250,000 fines and 15 years in prison.

All that happened was that two productive American citizens were deceived by government agents for no other purpose than those agents having to show 'results' in the 'war on terror.' How does it make us safer to put a medical doctor and a jazz musician in prison? Why did the FBI spend two years entrapping these two American citizens?

Both men have wives and children. Suppose you are a Muslim-American and FBI agents misrepresenting themselves as dangerous jihadists demanded services of you? Neither of the accused agreed to participate in a terrorist act: no bombs, no shootings, no hijackings. A doctor agreed to keep his Hippocratic oath if presented with wounded people in Saudi Arabia. A jazz musician agreed to teach martial arts.